CSS stands for Cascading Style Sheets and is used to define styles for displaying HTML elements. CSS has different levels that build upon each other and add new features. CSS level 1 was the first official recommendation in 1996, and level 2, published in 1998, added capabilities like positioning. CSS level 3 is currently under development. CSS saves work by defining styles that can be applied across many pages through external style sheets or internal style sheets. CSS has advantages like faster page loads and easier maintenance compared to only using HTML for styling.